


Never Going Home

by Rogersruinedmylife



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: CA:WS, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Depression, Heartbreak, M/M, Memory Loss, Sad, Steve Rogers Feels, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, can be read as relationship, slight reference to suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 12:23:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14915312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rogersruinedmylife/pseuds/Rogersruinedmylife
Summary: All Steve dreamed of since waking up from the ice was to go home





	Never Going Home

His knees wobbled as an overwhelming sense of grief washes over him. The glass rattles under his feet, wind whistling in his already ringing ears as they begin their descent. The Helicarier is plummeting towards the Potomac and Steve could almost hear Natasha’s voice. ‘Get out soldier’, she hisses in his mind, eyes blazing with a fury that Steve would paint the same colour as her vivid red hair, the colour of the blood he can already taste in his mouth as he gazes at his friend. Or what was left of him.  
‘Your name is James Buchannan Barnes’ he struggles to get the words out. Smoke is billowing around them, constricting his airways in a fashion reminiscent of the asthma attacks he had walking to their apartment in the summer hear. Fire crackles around them from the flames. His friend stares at him with cold, unseeing eyes. Steve feels a little part of him crack. If he was honest with himself, he had been cracking since his descent into the ocean in 1945, but the words would never pass his lips. He faltered under that gaze, so familiar yet so heartbreakingly alien as his face distorted with a determined anger. Steve watched as the metal fist flew towards him, a screamed ‘Shut up’ carrying on the wind as his body was flung backwards. Pain erupted as his bones reverberated against the glass. Frustration coursed through his body, gripping him as he ripped the cowl from his head, revealing his own anger, his own vulnerabilities as he staggered to his feet. He would fight for his friend, even if there was nothing left in the Winter Solider of the man he called Bucky.  
However those eyes returned to his. The steely grey that he had seen dance with amusement, mischief and flirtation in their younger years reflected a pain and confusion that left a bitter taste in Steve’s mouth. The man before him was a shell, an imitation of who his friend had been. Steve could see it in the wavering of his eyes, the frown tugging at his lips as his greasy hair hung around his face in long knots. His resolve drained from him as quickly as it had risen, a pale gathering of embers snuffed by one realisation. This wasn’t his Bucky, and Steve didn’t want to live in a world where the one thing that had driven him to right his sins, to search out justice and live despite the world crumbling beneath his feet in this new century. Bucky had been his saving grace as a teenager, Steve felt it was only cosmically right that it was by his hands, cruel and misguided as they maybe, that he exited this life. His body sagged as he blinked his eyes to banish the tears at the thought of home, of his mother’s smile and Bucky’s little sisters hugs. He was going home. ‘I’m not going to fight you’ Steve’s voice was steady, almost relieved. The admission taking years of pain and hatred off his burdened shoulders. His fingers released their tense grip on the shield, eyes fluttering closed as it disappeared through a broken area of glass. ‘I am free’ he whispered to himself in his mind, banishing the guilt that arose when his friend’s faces flickered behind his closed lids.  
‘You’re my friend’ Steve panted, more in relief than pain. His body was already healing the previous blows. He hated how quickly he healed. How his own body would stand in the way of his desire rest. He was so tired. He watched as the Soldiers face twisted in disgust, in anger at the word friend. He had seen anger on this face before, when he took a hit to the stomach during the war, but never disgust. It show how made the words the man spit at him easier as he placed the barrier between the man he knew and the one before him. ‘You’re my mission’ he spat, anger raging like the fire and smoke building around them as he lunged for him, using his metal arm to throw the resistance he expected Steve’s body to put up. It never came as Steve went limp before he even made contact, allowing himself to once again be propelled into the floor, his head hitting off one of the metal beams running along the glass panes. He relaxed his muscles, repressing his fight or flight responses as the cool metal made contact with his right cheek. Blood bubbled in his mouth as more hits came, his closing as they struggled to remain open due to the trauma to his head. The man above him repeared the previous phrase between blows. ‘I just want to go home. I am so damn tired Buck and theres nothing left fighting for’ Steve confessed in his mind, picturing the clean cut young man that saluted him in his dress uniform in the alley behind the cinema, ‘Everything is gone. Ma, your family, our apartment. You. I let you all down and I’m tired. Forgive me’.  
He blinked blood, sweat and tears from his good eye, the other swollen shut as the skin split beneath it like the skin of a watermelon. He chocked down his emotions, the hysterics as he gazed at the frozen face before him. ‘Then finish it. Cause I’m with you until the end of the line’ Steve muted the sob that wanted to escape his bruised throat. If this was the last version of Bucky he would see in this lifetime, he was damn well going to tell him he loved him in the only way he knew how. As the tiredness rolled through his aching body, Steve allowed all the pent up pain and resignation come to the surface. His stoic face devoid of his normally steely, shielded façade. His eye, barely open, held the same vulnerable, empty sadness as it had when his mother had died. Again, he did not cry. He didn’t plead or beg for his life. There was no bravado, no echo of the great Captain America. Just the acceptance that this little guy from Brooklyn who had walked hand in hand with death from birth, was ready to greet it once again at the hands of a friend.  
This stirred something in the man gripping his suit, his eyes widening at the words. Steve wanted to believe that the glassy sheen was from tears, recognition but he knew better than to hope. God had abandoned him early in his young life, tearing everything he loved from him, only to return them in twisted ways. The horror he saw crossing the Soldiers face wasn’t real, he convinced himself. The devastated look that haunted the face before him was just a projection of his own wishes. Simply a distant memory of the time Bucky had punched Steve in the face during an argument while drunk, only to realise what he had done as the bruise bloomed on Steve’s paper thin skin. Steve convinced himself that those lips, gaping in an unspoken agony, where simply widened to allow air to follow as the smoke grew thicker. He closed his good eye, unwilling to watch his mind try trick him into living in this world of darkness and deceit. He was ready to once again die for a country that had stabbed him and all he stood for in the back while shaking his hand.  
Before the Soldier could strike again, a crack sounded throughout the space and he opened his eyes in time to see a beam hurtling towards the fragile glass he rested on. And then he was falling. Air rushing through his ear and around him, providing a comforting relief. He was flying, he thought to himself manically. Finally soaring free from the shield that had never sat quiet right in his hands after Bucky’s death and his emergence from the ice. All that had tied him to the ground was gone. He would once again die a heroes death and be celebrated for his darkest wish. Death. The tiredness that had built with in him since he woke from the ice was already lighter. Memories of laughter, secret smiles, the smell of his mother’s perfume, the lisp of Rebecca Barnes as she called his name to play with, a comforting hand running through his hair and a whisper from a bed side while a priest read him his rites. ‘You can let go now Stevie, it’s okay’ his mother’s soothing lilt in her native Irish unfurled that last bit of bitter anger he had carried with him from the ice as his body returned to water once more. He would have laughed at the irony of it all if his lungs weren’t filling with water. He didn’t fight his slipping consciousness, allowing a drowsy smile to grace his lips as he imagined a warm hand embracing his. He was going home.

 

Steve Rogers woke to the beeping of his heart monitor, his limbs aching with a familiar tiredness. Music played in the background, coaxing him to consciousness. Dread filled his chest. The scene was too close for comfort as he opened his eyes to another white hospital room. Sam sat in a chair by his bedside, relief crossing his feature as he noted Steve’s open eyes. He allowed them to close, letting the sounds around him fade as his heart pounded, the bitter taste returning to his mouth. He shook as he repressed the sob that wanted to rip through him. He wasn’t going home. Steve Rogers was alive, body aching and chest tight with a horrible bitter darkness. He was never going home.


End file.
